Tag: Society

That day I was running late (as normal) to my medical office manager job. Luckily, the doctors were running later than I was.

I opened up the office, turned on the local AM radio station the head doctor liked to listen to and started preparing the patient rooms for the patients that were coming in that day.

And as I was getting the ledger ready for the day’s entries, I heard on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. It sounded like it was a small plane. ‘A Cessna probably,’ I thought and continued my daily work.

Then the announcer started to get more panicked as news started coming in of another plane hitting the World Trade Center. Then a plane at the Pentagon. And another plane downed in Pennsylvania.

I can’t remember the order anymore, but I remember the panic in the announcer’s voice. I remember every one of our patients canceling that day. I remember sitting in the doctor’s private office with his old TV turned on so that we could see what was going on. After the office closed for lunch I remember going to a friend’s house so I could continue to see the news coverage. I remember being in line for gas for over an hour as I tried to get home and thinking that the world was falling down around me.

I remember not being able to sleep that night, and for weeks afterward, without the TV blaring because it was just too quiet and scary. I remember sitting inches from the television, listening to the president speak words that weren’t in my common vocabulary before, “Al-Qaeda,” “Jihad” and later hearing the name Osama bin Laden.

Even bringing those things out and speaking about them, 17 years later, still hurts. I still want to cry. I still want to scream. I still feel a thickness in my chest that threatens to overcome me. Perhaps it’s PTSD, perhaps it’s simply the fact that the visions of those towers falling will forever be imprinted in my head, no matter how much I try to get them out.

This year, on this anniversary, I’m already seeing posts about how we shouldn’t have memorial services. We shouldn’t be marking this day at all because we created these evil people with our Middle East politics in the first place. Some would rather use this day to rally against the government and its international politics. Others want us to turn this day into a national day of mourning to honor the heroic dead that died on this day to ensure it stays fresh and can be recalled instantly by every American.

The fact of the matter is, I really don’t give a flying shit about any of those things. Right now, I simply still just want to grieve.

I want to grieve for what my nieces and nephews have lost thanks to now necessary extra security measures.

I want to grieve for the pain of loved ones that are missing friends and family that should have come home from work that day.

I want to grieve for my own life changes because on that day I became a little less naive.

I want to cry for the people on that plane, who realized they were going to die no matter what happened, and decided to take it down themselves.

I want to grieve for the unity of the country after the event. That unity was caused only by the shared pain everyone felt. We all were willing to pitch in and do what we could to help those that were hurting and try to pick up and get things moving again. It was comforting, yet upsetting to see all at the same time.

And now, seeing the posts I am, I want to grieve for the loss of that unity as I think now it may truly be dead in this country.

So for today, I really don’t give a shit about why you say we should or should not have memorials and why this happened in the first place. I don’t care about comparing the number of people dead in wars versus this horrible event in US history. And I’m certainly not going to respect those who bang a drum of remembrance while saying we should be doing such and such right now because of the heroes that died on this day. And the people who continue to place fear in hearts and minds that this could happen again because they want to get something passed in Congress can just go to hell.

All I want to do today is fucking grieve. And try to heal. Something I’m still trying to do after 17 years. So just give me the space to keep trying.

Well take my hand, and follow me,
Through the trial of the flame.
Oh take my hand, and follow me,
Through the trial of the flame.

Now well within the cold dark battlements,
Black raven calls my name.
Never’ fore have I explored this backside of my brain.
There amongst those misty ruins likes this port of death and pain.

Take my hand, we’ll make a stand,
Through the trial of the flame.
Well take my hand and follow me,
Through the trial of the flame.

Gonna take this long trek down the shoreline.
Where the sea awaits me there,
If you do not fear it friend,
You’re ‘bout as mad as can compare.
Lost souls, and ghosts and phantoms are there awaitin’ in the rain.
So take my hand and walk with me through the trial of the flame.

Take my hand and follow me,
Through the trial of the flame.
Take my hand and follow me,
Through the trial of the flame.

How does it happen now good lad
Black raven calls your name?
On this dismal voyage through a world that reeks of death and pain.
So clear the smoke it’s vastness so infest your mortal brain.
Take my hand I’ll lead you through this trial of the flame.

Take my hand and follow me,
Through the trial of the flame.
Take my hand and follow me,
Through the trial of the flame.

I may not have all of the lyrics of this song correct, but they are as close as I can get them from listening to Garold Amadon’s album “Tillerman’s Rye”. This song for me is speaking to a lot of trials that I seem to be going through lately; with the fibromyalgia, the changes in my social groups, my work and in my spiritual life. It’s funny, Tillerman’s Rye came out over 20ish years ago now and those lyrics are still as meaningful now as they were then.

We aren’t meant to be stagnant beings on this planet. We are meant to learn, grow wiser and to help others. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to hurt along the way as we stretch ourselves. We can only try to keep moving forward, keep pushing, keep striving for what is right for us and for our communities.

(Song by Garold Amadon, off the album “Tillerman’s Rye,” available at his website)

I like having a lot of different pagan authors and bloggers on my social media feeds. There are a lot of ideas and differing opinions and seeing these make me feel like this religion is still very much growing and changing based on the needs of its followers.

At the same time, I don’t like it, because there are a lot of ideas and different opinions.

Sometimes the topics can get me really frustrated, especially when the topics seem to be about things that really have no bearing on what actions can be done on a day to day basis. Don’t get me wrong; they are still important discussions. I simply tend to be much more practical in my thinking than hypothetical. I want to look at things from the perspective of what is happening right now, and how my morals and ethics should be applied to decisions that I make each and every day. So discussions involving Paganism as a whole, interpretations on what the current trends are saying (or not saying) and what paganism is going to look like and/or how we are going to get there are interesting, but I don’t tend to get involved in them.

It does make me wonder however, if we are spending too much time discussing philosophical concepts and scenarios and not enough time discussing day to day thoughts and issues. Many of the thoughts I get from blogs and the community seem to me to distance their practices from their daily life. We talk about futuristic societies and how communities will learn to get by when they rely on their neighbors and trade for goods. We talk about how corporations as a whole are just in it for the shareholder value, and how they destroy our earth. We rail against the fact that a solid part of the population doesn’t have the means to get by from day to day. These are all good subjects, and needed conversation, but is it too much discussion and not enough action? I fully believe we need to stretch our minds and consider issues, vent when we need to, and I’ll absolutely read and ponder, but it doesn’t feel to me like the current conversation is going to bring any conclusions that can be immediately acted upon. The one thing I know about me is that I am a person who wants to act on things to make them better; not just ponder and hypothesize. And when actions do get discussed, they are usually about the “We” as a group and not what “I” can do.

Extreme solutionsThere are extreme solutions that some can already live out. I know pagans who are trying to live by cash alone as they don’t want to borrow money. I know others who are trying to not have a digital footprint and still others who recycle everything and live carbon neutral. These are all very worthy and I applaud those who have made it their life’s work to live to those standards. But it very much is a life’s work as this society doesn’t make it easy to do any of those things. I would also imagine there is no free time. I expect the people that live this way have to work very hard each day in order to live, and it’s a very hard life with very little niceties thrown in.

One part of me wonders why I, who profess to be pagan, am not trying to do the same thing. And then the practical part of me says that none of these things are possible for me; some because I already have a digital footprint and debt to pay off. Therefore I still need to hold down an actual job, cannot walk to work as it’s too far and I still need to buy things to work and live. I also have medical conditions that require vigilant care and cost lots of money. And while I do have a nice size garden, and the hubby is a blacksmith, I’m far from being self sustainable.

As much as I’d like to live in a world where I could work for my food and have a roof over my head and trade for the things I need, society as a whole is simply not set up that way. And it would take loads of money to just get something like that started here in the United States (not to mention cash the taxes on land that need to be continuously paid.) And oh yeah, we don’t have healthcare for all, so there is more money that’s needed for those pesky medical conditions.

Can we strive to build toward something like that? It’s very possible! But I see it more working out in retirement by living off savings built throughout working careers – at least for my husband and I. Others could be living in different situations that would make it more doable, but I’m established now. And being established has made me realize I can give more back to the pagan community now that I’m established than I could by trying to uproot and live in a religious group.

So if I’m not contributing to some sort of group effort and am not going to the extreme like others do, then how do I live my pagan truth?

CorporationsWell, some may consider me not living as a true pagan. Some would forgive the fact that we can’t live in an extreme in today’s society, but that I’m still suspect because I’ve violated some universal pagan identity.

I work for a large corporation.

The same pagans that I respect and care about also rant and rail about those that they do (or don’t) work for. Corporations are the worst. They are out to stick it to the little guy. They don’t care about anything but the bottom line. I get the feeling a lot that there are those that believe if you are working for a corporation and aren’t angry about having to do it it, perhaps your morals are skewed.

To be honest, I LIKE where I work. Yes, it’s a corporation. Yes, it’s about the bottom line and about how much we sell. But the product that we do sell helps people – in fact, it’s used in surgeries to help people get better. To me, that isn’t all bad.

Before I worked here, I worked for an automaker. I helped to make people smile because they liked looking at shiny new vehicles and collect pictures of them. I also helped people get from place to place. Was the corporation’s main focus about the bottom line? Yep. But there were still things about the job that as a whole, helped others in some form or fashion.

Don’t get me wrong, if I needed to be replaced, I could be replaced – easily. But that is the nature of the corporation. What people don’t realize is that each replacement also costs the company thousands of dollars in hiring, training and new benefit and tax costs. So even being replaced has it’s trade offs.

There is significant concern in this day and age though about corporations stepping outside their boundaries. They lobby for lax tax and environmental laws, and that is a very good point. And there I feel it is my duty to say something – to vote, tell my representatives how I feel about that so they can push back, and to donate to causes that will help fight back. But overall, I am not going to decide that each and every corporation is bad because of the work of some of them. Just like not every pagan is bad because we have a few problems with bad people occasionally.

One last thing about corporations. A lot of people don’t care for the fact that there are few people in the world who seem to have all of the wealth and money (read power). But that is how it’s been in many cases in history. I’d rather be concerned with what I can do when those corporations abuse their employees (vote with my money) than to try to overthrow the entire societal structure.

My Own ActionsThere was a story about a man walking along the beach that was full of starfish. He’d walk by one, pick it up, and throw it into the water. Another man saw him doing so and asked him why he was wasting his time because he could never save all of the starfish from dying. And as he picked up another starfish and proceeded to toss it into the sea, he said, “I made a difference to this one.”

I have come to terms with the fact that there will always be something else you can do better to promote paganism and to live within your personal truths. But until I find that thing to do better, I’m going to do the best I can with what I have.

• I am going to do my best to touch the lives of those I meet by being compassionate, kind, fair and honest. That also means if I am asked what my religion is, I’m going to be honest and speak about it.

• I am going to do the best I can for this earth by continuing to recycle, reduce my waste and carbon footprint, and pick up trash when I can.

• And since I spend 45 hours a week there and employees (and managers) are people too, I’m going to do my best to be a good employee. Because being a good employee helps touch the lives of everyone else you work with and helps make their lives easier. And even though overall my work will affected the corporation’s bottom line, it also helps people. So by doing my best to be a good employee, I will also be doing my best to help people who use the product. And, if it ever becomes a situation where I find the money the corporation makes is more important to my upper management than the people, I will choose to find someplace else to work.

• I am going to take care of myself the best way I know how, in every aspect of self care that I need. Because how can I help others if I don’ t help myself first?

• I am going to do what I can to vote by the money I spend. I will speak to my representatives when I see serious injustice and help take care and protect my family and friends.

• I am going to do my best to serve the pagan community by speaking where I am guided to, teach when I am asked and guided to, comfort and listen when I am asked to and to use my skills and gifts to help others as is asked and is needed.

• I am going to do my best to honor my ancestors, my Gods and Goddesses and my allies and spirits. And I will continue to learn how to do this better.

After all that is said and done, the only thing that I truly have control over is myself. And as a pagan who focuses significantly on self improvement, this truth rings out over and over again. I can’t change the beliefs of someone else unless the other person chooses to change them. I can’t guide others unless they choose to be guided. And to try to purposefully choose to act with a purpose to only change others beliefs 100% of the time is downright exhausting.

However, if living in my own truth helps someone else find their own, then that is something worth striving for.

I don’t always live these personal truths well, but I keep trying. And in the end, that is all I can do.

Take your prayers and thoughts and shove it
We made this mess, we live it
Day by day, night by night
The burning of the world never ends

So you don’t think you had an effect?
When was the last time you tried to act?
No, ACT
Not Cry
Not beg
Not pray
ACT – with a vote?
A call?
Donate?
Or volunteer?
Or ask why?

Did you try? No, you didn’t.
Too afraid of loosing your hate?
The hate sitting in your bones
Your mind?
Your heart?
Too afraid to lose “us” vs “them”?
Afraid of the human under that skin?

Afraid of that connection?
That touch
That knowing
That feeling
You don’t give a fuck about all that
Or anyone but yourself
Let them die,
Let them burn
You’ve got more important things to do
Like fighting for YOUR rights
YOUR religion
YOUR free speech
YOUR right to be loud and free
It’s YOUR gun, YOUR Ammo
And that’s alright
Cuz your rights just killed again
And Again
And Again

So cherish that hate
that blessed emotion
Keep it close so we don’t touch

I got a lot of response from friends on the post I wrote about not bashing the new age movement. And while some people felt I had made some good points, I got the idea that overall many people read and dismissed what I had to say as being either naive or simply dismissed me personally as being too ‘New Age’ to think critically about the issues in the first place. I had expected that. I also expected people to leave hurtful comments about the post (which luckily, I did not get).

Overall, there was a bit of good discussion about the post. And while I was going back and forth several times with other members of the pagan community, someone else popped up and made the comment that the arguments in the pagan community never change.

I laughed off the comment with him as I agree that there will always be arguments in the pagan community about labels and issues, but I disagreed with him about the particular discussion. Instead, I framed what I was engaging in with these other pagans was a discussion with other peers of the pagan community about the points I had brought up. He then disagreed and brought up his points as to why this was an argument; I gave my side, the others involved gave their sides, and neither of us budged. He concluded again that based on that definition, we were in an argument.

I reread the posts, and he was right. And my heart sank.

Now in all fairness, I had no idea what to expect when I put that post out there. But when I reread the posts, I did see the underlying theme of “I dare you to try to convince me that whatever you say is something I should consider” with some of the participants, so thus, it was in many ways, an argument. So I gave up.

I was in an argument, and that really bothered me. The post wasn’t supposed to become something to defend against. It wasn’t supposed to be me defending my ideals and my right to my own beliefs, nor to defend what I meant by recognizing that even New Age ideals had a bit of truth to them. It was simply me trying to get another facet of a situation out in the open for people to consider.

Perhaps I am naïve. In the late 80s/early 90s, the pagan community that I was a part of were mostly open to new ideas. We were all growing; and information wasn’t easy to come by. All we had were books and each other. So, if someone had an idea, most of the time people would listen, consider the idea, then either admit it wasn’t right for them or perhaps continue the discussion to see how it could fit into their spirituality.

But that isn’t this pagan culture now. Instead it feels like today you get into the pagan community under a specific set of labels. And if something doesn’t fit into that label, or (Gods Forbid!) if someone tries to push themselves into a label that a specific definition exists for (and is thus considered ‘incorrect’), arguments break out.

That argument culture is the current culture for everything; at least here in the United States. No matter what the topic is, someone is going to disagree with what it is you think. And not only will they disagree, they will be sure to make certain you knew it complete with taunts and expletives if you push it enough. Why I thought pagan spirituality and culture would be different and more like the culture I grew my own beliefs in, I don’t know. But I guess I needed an awakening to what things were truly like.

Why does it even matter what others think? It honestly doesn’t matter to me if someone dismisses my idea. But it does make me wonder that if by dismissing a different spiritual idea immediately are they doing a disservice to themselves? Perhaps instead of challenging them, contemplation on at least a small scale should be considered?

Many years ago, I read a book called “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell. The book has stuck with me all these years because of the exercises. Those exercises in the book very quickly proved Mr. Gladwell’s point about how we don’t necessarily think, but instead react to unspoken and unknown biases. While doing those exercises, I realized that I held biases that I had no idea I had. Me, then a practicing pagan and someone who tried very hard to be open to new ideas and opportunities for growth still had biases. The realization hurt. And it also made me vow that I would always look at someone else’s opinion as objectively as possible to ensure that there wasn’t some grain of truth to it for myself. I admit that it isn’t always easy. But it is something I aspire to as a personal creed.

That personal creed is why I was so upset at the argumentative nature of the discussion. I had hoped that other spiritual people would also believe the way I do about bias, and thus try to look at things with an open mind. Now perhaps some did, I don’t know for certain, but the intent that I read from the posts seemed to me to suggest that the bad things the new age community has done outweighs anything I would have put forth as good, and thus the ideal of the post was dismissed.

And I could go the other way and say perhaps my bias at belittling myself makes me think that the intent I describe above happened when it didn’t happen at all.

It sounds like minutia, doesn’t it? It sounds like critical thinking gone awry perhaps. But in my belief, we have to think that deeply to understand the currents of energy that are around us. We have to let our bias go; let any anthropomorphic ideals of those energies go. The world and its energy behaves differently than we think it does; no matter how much you learn, no matter how many teachers you have or how many lives you live, we still need to expect the unexpected while we are living on this Earth.

So I come from this experience a little wiser and with more understanding, but with even more dedication to my personal creeds. But I’ll always hope, and make time for an open minded discussion with my fellow pagans about ideals. After all, that which does not change me only makes me stronger.

When I was first starting to blog a couple years ago, I read a post from another Lokean Blogger about a meditation/journey she had. She remarked about how every time she transformed her form in the journey, Loki had pushed her back into the same exact form that she had in life. She talked about being extremely mad at him for doing so, because she hated her figure so much. But Loki insisted, saying he wanted her as comfortable with her body in the physical form as she was with her mental form and abilities of shape changing.

When I read that, I remembered thinking, ‘yep, I’m going to have to do that someday too.’ Well, that day has come. But learning to love my form is happening in a much different way than what this blogger had to go through. For me, there are additional facets of this that I must face.

As most who read this know, I have Fibromyalgia. When I was first diagnosed, I thought I could handle the disease by simply decreasing the quantity of my activity, and taking longer rest periods.

Boy was I wrong!

It’s a lot more complicated than that. Sometimes you can push yourself, but more often doing activities becomes dependent on variables that must be considered before you do an activity. Further, the more you push to do something, the more you can make the disease worse. That means the little bit of extra work you did in a martial arts class might mean you have permanently shortened the amount of energy you have every day for the rest of your life.

So my being comfortable with my body doesn’t just include the body issues (which also thanks to the fibro are on the forefront again). It also includes becoming comfortable with what I can and cannot do. I need to learn how to listen to my body more deeply than I ever have before to better understand what I can do, when I can push to do more and when I need to take time to rest more deeply.

It doesn’t stop there. Fibromyalgia also messes with digestion and exacerbates other conditions. This now means what is going into my body is just as important as what I do. Eat the wrong thing, and the balance of the whole system can take weeks and even months to recover.

So in short, instead of just being comfortable with my body, I now must also be mindful of my movement, my eating, my rest and how I think and feel in order to deal with this disease properly and make the most out of what activities I can do.

I am not writing this to whine. This is a challenge. It’s one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever had to take on in my life. I also know I don’t need to accept this challenge if I don’t want to. I could simply go with what I can do at any given moment. But if I want to lead a life that is the most authentic to my spirit, my morals and my beliefs, and if I want to become the best person I can or pursue any activity that needs any sort of training, and to fulfill my obligations, it is work I must do. This to me, is what my Gods would want me to do.

So, what does being authentic to my body mean to me?

It means bowing out of my last martial arts class, for now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to read up on the arts I have trained on and practice the techniques when my body allows me to. Sure, I won’t be in a sparring ring as an opponent anytime soon; but perhaps with patience I can be there as a referee. Or at the very least, I can support my husband and help him with forms and technique as he prepares for his own black belt boards in late summer.

Running slower, or doing a running/walking practice instead of straight running needs to be considered if I ever want to race again. I could still complete races, but it may be much more walking than running depending on how my body feels that day, and I must be OK with that and not push anyway.

My sword practice needs to be equal amounts of reading about fencing and drills I can do alone; and I must not get upset about missing opportunities to cross blades with my sword brothers and sisters. I have already beat myself up enough for the significant number of practices I’ve missed. Even though historical fencing is lower impact than my other martial arts studies, it still takes a significant amount of energy to engage an opponent. I need to remember that.

I need to reconsider a personal eating plan. Foods I once had no issue eating now bring stomach pain and days of being uncomfortable, which then eats into the stamina of the day. My beloved two cups of coffee in the morning are in jeopardy as I find I am still having discomfort from drinking it even after switching to a lactose free creamer, and then to a non-dairy creamer. Carb-laden foods like the gluten free pizza my husband and I both love are now on the chopping block once again, along with the infrequent serving of bacon we occasionally have with a weekend breakfast. And as a caveat to this; I cannot just depend on a diet someone else puts together for me: Diets like Paleo, or FODMAP are good starting points, but they are not one size fits all with conditions like I have.

Finally, I need to become comfortable with my figure. I have a ‘lovely’ area around my stomach that reacts like a natural ‘muffin top’. (when you wear tighter jeans and your skin pops over the top of your jeans like the top of a muffin – that’s a muffin top. By the way, whomever decided to name a flap of skin after a calorie-laden baked good needs a right and proper curse.) It doesn’t matter if I am wearing tight pants or not; my body has made this natural hideousness on its own; and instead of pushing myself to lose weight and attempt to hide that area with slimmers and tops that flare out; I need to be comfortable with it. This is the part that I think is going to be the hardest.

This sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? It does, until you realize what routine I kept prior to the onset of the fibromyalgia:

Two hours of Tae Kwon Do classes a week plus an hour of Hap Ki Do classes per week

1.5 to two hours of yoga per week

Running twice a week, with one run being a distance run of 5 miles or more

Swimming a half mile to a mile a week

Weekday lunch walks done as fast as possible with a minimum of 2 miles completed each walk

Eating the bare minimum of calories I could (usually 1500-1800) to continue to lose as much fat as possible (Yep! Way too little for the activity levels, I know.)

Perhaps I should be thankful for the Fibromyalgia in some ways. It made me realize what I was doing to my body was torture and not healthy. Sure, I was getting down in size. But I realize now it wasn’t worth the panic over the calorie or not being able to get a workout in because of sickness. And it absolutely wasn’t worth the fear that I had every morning of my pants not fitting well because of bloating or because I had gained weight.

It’s amazing what we put ourselves through for reasons like health, pushing through obstacles or to become better at something. Sometimes in the effort we become taskmasters and beat ourselves down more than anyone else ever could.

And that is why being authentic is so important to me now. Loki was right about the other blogger needing to be comfortable in her own form, and he’s right about me needing not only to be comfortable, but being able to understand and know my body now more than ever before. This isn’t work that is going to happen overnight. And it will probably take many months of understanding and then months trial and error to move my activity levels forward.

But like with any other task, it’s not going to get any easier or take less time until you get started.